Our Q+A with QAnon reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh

We caught up with the BBC’s disinformation reporter to discuss the power and pull of conspiracies, especially amid a pandemic.

Leading up to the 2020 election, we’re chatting with leading experts about misinformation, censorship, fact-checking, and plenty more.

For the second installment of our interview series, we (virtually) sat down with Shayan Sardarizadeh, a BBC reporter who covers disinformation. Since the pandemic began, most of his work has centered on QAnon, a sprawling system of conspiratorial beliefs that’s exploded in popularity in recent months.

Here’s what he had to say.

JM: QAnon has kind of been the holy grail for conspiracy groups over the past year, particularly since the start of the pandemic. It seems like their groups are engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with social networks. They get removed in one arena and they emerge in another. Having reported on this very closely for a while now — you’ve attended the rallies, you’ve talked to the protestors — what is it about this movement that’s allowed it to engender the support and the following that it has? What is it about QAnon, specifically, that people are connecting with?

SS: Yeah, there are several factors that have made this sort of a beast of a conspiracy. The first is, apart from having a couple of central narratives that they focus on, the rest of it is a sort of mish-mash of different issues and conspiracies. It’s sort of a tent that allows people from different backgrounds, views, political perspectives to come in and either put whatever they like into it, or take from it whatever they like, rather than it being about just one or two narratives. It’s much more flexible than that. So people that come into the group feel like they’re part of a community, like they’re treated like an adult who is capable of doing research that is going to help the whole world be rid of these Satan-worshipping evil pedophiles that are running the world. So there’s a sense that you’re actually contributing to this massive movement of good versus evil. That’s a huge pull factor.

The second thing is this issue of child abuse/child trafficking, which I think all of us can agree is heinous, one of the most horrific, terrible, disgusting crimes that anyone can commit. And it’s such a strong, emotional issue. Anybody, regardless of who we are, is horrified by the issue of child abuse. So if you have some decent narratives on top of some professionally-made content that appeals to your basic emotions about child abuse, it’s very easy to pull people in, regardless of whether what they’re feeding you is accurate.

The third thing was the pandemic, which was really a launching pad for QAnon, because as far back as January, QAnon members were posting about how it might be that this pandemic was planned by the cabal and the Democrats in cahoots with China and all of the evil people who want to bring President Trump down. They colluded to prevent President Trump from being re-elected. So they were already primed to spread conspiracy theories about the pandemic. Then you consider there were a whole host of QAnon influencers who, over the past three years, have managed to get hundreds of thousands of people on several social media platforms, to basically watch them, read them, pay attention to them.

By late March, they had already built up a large following, so at that point, they were now in lockdown in front of their computers, their laptops, their mobile phones, and some people particularly had some kind of unease or concern about what was going on, about their jobs, their loved ones — some of them legitimate concerns — this all sort of worked as a perfect storm to bring tons and tons of people in. So if you see one video about masks or vaccines that you find interesting, then you go in and join one of their groups, Instagram circles, or subscribe to one of their YouTube channels, that’s where the process of becoming a full-fledged QAnoner begins.

The last thing happened in June, July of this year. Suddenly, because of the amount of traction and engagement that these QAnon memes and videos were getting, all of the social media companies began restricting their content. They came down heavily, and suddenly, those people felt they could no longer get the kind of traction that they’re used to. Then Q encouraged people to try to camouflage their genuine beliefs and allegiances in order to do well for the greater good. So then, they started hijacking existing, innocuous hashtags like #SaveTheChildren and #SaveOurChildren, which were being used by genuine charities and institutions that were working to tackle the issue of child trafficking. Because those hashtags were already popular, that was another factor that really made QAnon a global movement.

Obviously, the concern with QAnon and groups like it that build a following on social media is that it’s not just trivial newsfeed fodder, that’s just fun and harmless. These groups can move offline and do real harm to real people. Is it safe to say that the average Qanon group or page is a threat to public safety? Or is that more of a worst-case scenario?

If you actually spend time in these QAnon pages or groups, when you read the content, very few people are openly saying, “I’m going to go out and do real harm.” The problem is the type of content that is being pushed and the type of narratives they’re being fed, frame a group of people, without any real evidence, as being so evil, so harmful to society, that you kind of expect that some people will actually think, “Enough is enough. I’m going to go out there and stop this evil.” When you’re constantly pushing the narrative that Hillary Clinton is killing and eating babies, that Joe Biden is abusing children, that companies like Wayfair or Disney, or people in Hollywood, are involved in abusing children, some people, because they’re so emotionally driven, go the extra mile and take matters into their own hands. And we know there have been actual examples over the past couple of years of people doing that.

Facebook announced a couple of weeks ago that they were going to ban any pages, groups, and Instagram accounts representing QAnon from its platform. It seemed like a lot of people had kind of a split reaction: on the one hand, they were happy to see the world’s biggest social network come out with a hardline stance on how they were going to deal with this. But they were also kind of wondering why it had taken so long? What was your reaction when the news broke?

When it comes to these announcements, as a journalist, obviously I don’t take a personal view of whether they should or shouldn’t ban this account or that narrative. What I care about is once they’ve announced a new policy and they’ve vowed to enforce it, do they then enforce it or not? My job is to hold them to account of what they say they’re going to do. So when Facebook announced in August, they were going to crack down on QAnon content tied to violent narratives and violent behaviors, I was checking the status of the QAnon groups and pages. And it was a mixed bag. Some content got pulled. Other content didn’t. Whereas, with the more recent crackdown, within the first couple of days, they enforced it very heavily. The night after they made the more recent announcement, my list of QAnon groups and pages was decimated. The issue now is, we know for a fact, QAnon is very flexible and they can quickly switch focus. They’ve already done it once with #SaveTheChildren, and they can and will do it again. Let’s face it: QAnon needs major platforms because it’s not just about being a “digital soldier” and spreading a message. You want people to see and hear and share what you’re putting out. You want to add more people into this battle of good and evil that they believe is going to save the world.

So obviously every social network has its own way of dealing with all of this. Some, like FB and Twitter, are quicker to shut it down while others, like Gab and Parler are basically welcoming QAnon groups with open arms. When you see them take the hands-off approach, even if it’s well-intentioned, what kind of impact are we seeing from such policies that essentially uphold free speech, for better or worse?

That’s a very good question. And it’s really difficult to answer because you can make a very good case that these bans don’t work because they do push them to these other platforms. The counter-narrative is if all the major platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, where millions of people are, ban them, it’s fine if they go onto these minor, fringe platforms, like Gab and Parler, because those have very limited reach.

I know one QAnon group on Gab added some 20,000 members in like 12 hours, so they’re already there. The problem is, those platforms are echo chambers. There’s no interest for these people to spend their time shouting these slogans to these people who are already converted, who already agree with them. They want to be on major platforms where they can reach millions and millions of people and convert non-QAnon believers into part of the “Army.”

So you’ve been covering this beat for months now. I’m curious: what has surprised you the most about QAnon, aside from the sheer growth of the movement?

One thing that has been a question mark has been just how appealing it is to women, in particular. Specifically, the whole wave of “soft QAnon” who came in after the #SaveTheChildren hashtag was hijacked. This new wave of people are overwhelmingly women. This is true in most of the countries that I’m watching. It pulled in a lot of people from the wellness community — yoga, meditation, even mild anti-vax communities and those circles are frequented overwhelmingly by women.

Switching gears a little bit, there’s something else I’d like to discuss with you. Obviously, COVID-19 seems to have exponentially increased the amount of misinformation online. There is a deluge of false or misleading claims about the virus itself, lockdowns, the vaccine — really any related subject you can think of. You were one of the people that contracted the virus. You openly discussed your struggle with the illness. You were very sick for over a month. You have a unique insight into this illness that most people don’t, in that it’s not a headline — it was something you experienced firsthand. How did your experience with COVID-19 line up with how you felt it was being reported on?

Given that it’s the biggest public health crisis of our lifetimes and because it’s affected literally everyone around the world, it’s still getting a lot of traction. It’s a fast-moving story. It’s killed a lot of people, many have lost their jobs, mental health issues have been exacerbated, domestic violence has increased. So the most important thing for me, with regard to misinformation, is to focus on the stuff that we know is definitely wrong, instead of dabbling into the claims that are a little more dubious. For example, when it comes to people saying COVID-19 is a hoax, we know that that is flat out untrue. Or, the idea that if you put on a mask, you breathe in carbon dioxide and that is harmful to your health. Or, stuff like “5G is causing COVID-19.”

The interesting thing is, in January, February, we saw the first wave of misinformation, that it was a bio-weapon that came from a lab. Then we went into lockdowns, and mask mandates and social distancing guidelines, and we saw a lot of misinformation on that. What I’m following is what type of misinformation will be relevant next? Will it be the same narratives recycled or will it focus on new topics?

This is a question that I love to ask people who work in the misinformation space, and it’s a question that we get asked a lot and we post about. Suppose you have a friend or family member who’s espousing QAnon views or ideas on social media, and you know that what they’re saying has been roundly debunked. How do you go about respectfully calling them out on that?

First of all, it’s important to recognize, this is the power of social media. Particularly at a time like this, everyone is going through a difficult time. There’s a lot of uncertainty. This is a novel virus. There’s a lot we still don’t know about it. All of this contributes to the ground for a lot of rumors and all of this misinformation to spread.

When a family member who sends you a story that says, “They’ve discovered the cure for COVID-19 in India, and it’s cow dung,” never scold them or shout at them. Always present the evidence, and give them the “why.” Just because something is going to go viral, that doesn’t mean we have to share it.

It’s important to remember that not everyone who is sharing this stuff is doing so with malice. So when you see something and you don’t know whether it’s true or not, just don’t share it. It’s as simple as that.